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June 27, 2008
Things I'm a Fan of... aka Things I Like
Someone posted a thread asking this on NYYFans and I figure it would be good to talk about some of the things I like a lot to off-set the sourness of my post earlier today on something I don't like too much. Of course Jim, family, friends and the dog come before all.
*Nascar - I love racing in general and have since I was a little girl. My favorite drivers are Michael Waltrip and Steve Park but I also like David Reutimann, Josh Wise, Michael McDowell, Elliott Sadler, Ken Schrader, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon and many others.
*The sound of the engines being started on pit road. Watching a pit stop from pit road. The busyness of the garage area and the teams at work. Close finishes. Exciting racing. First time winners.
*Baseball - New York Yankees fan now and always. My all time favorite players are David Cone, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, John Olerud and Robin Ventura (even though the last two were only Yankees for a short time). Current favorites are Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina and Alex Rodriguez.
*The excitement of walking into Yankee Stadium. A great pitching duel. Grand slams. Walk-off home-runs. Small ball that wins games.
*Photography - I'm constantly looking around me and seeing opportunities for photos. If I could spend all day, every day taking photos I would be very happy. One day I'd love to go from National Park to National Park exploring and taking photos. I'd love to go from race to race (with hot passes of course) doing the same. Not only do I love taking photos myself I very much enjoy seeing other people's photography, particularly landscapes and nature as well as aerial photography. Ansel Adams and David Muench are my favorite photographers.
*Speaking of National Parks - love 'em! I've not been to many National Parks but I'm in awe of the beauty of within them. I'm very interested in the history of National Parks and I also love to read everything I can get my hands on about National Parks from the history of individual parks to search and rescue accounts to journals of people who explore remote areas of the parks. Particular favorites include two that I've actually visited - Crater Lake, Grand Canyon and Acadia as well as a whole host of others that I haven't - Yellowstone, Yosemite, Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and Bryce Canyon. A new favorite that I've started getting into reading about is Olympic National Park.
*Rocks - Since I was a little girl I've been fascinated by rocks. I have a collection of rocks and minerals and I love going to gem and mineral shows. My favorite rock is rutilated quartz but I like pretty much anything that has inclusions in it.
*Rock formations that have been eroded by wind, water or sand. Canyons, particularly slot canyons - never been to one but I love reading about them and seeing photos of them. The arches, hoodoos and other formation in Utah and other parts of the Southwest are particularly beautiful to me. I got a small taste of all of that in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada and I hope one day to visit Utah and do some exploring there. I also love sea stacks and wave smoothed rocks and stones.
*The ocean. I could sit all day on the beach, not sunning myself but watching the waves. I love the sound of waves crashing to shore. I love picking up stones, shells and sea glass along the edge of the water. Seagulls. Tide pools. Starfish, sea urchins and horseshoe crabs. Minus tides. Rocky coast of Maine. Big waves. The beach at sunrise or sunset. Driftwood.
*Magazines - I love to read in general but I especially love magazines! I like reading about places so I have subscriptions to magazines about New Jersey, Maine and Arizona and also pick up magazines about Cape Cod and Cape May regularly. I also subscribe to Nascar Scene, Food Arts, Outside, Rock & Gem, Popular Photography, Shutterbug, Photo District News, Outdoor Photographer and Entertainment Weekly. When I visit a bookstore I almost always leave with other magazines from Rolling Stone to climbing magazines, basically whatever catches my eye.
*Books - I almost exclusively only read non-fiction particularly books about nature, the outdoors, national parks and photography. I used to be very into reading mysteries, African-American literature and literature of the Holocaust and will sometimes still read books in that genre.
*Going online - aside from being a admin and moderator for NYYFans, and I'm also the moderator of a Nascar related forum. There's good and bad things about moderating forums but mostly I like it. Besides that I enjoy discussing racing on a handful of racing forums. I'm a news junkie so I like to visit a bunch of news sites. I just like information in general so I'm always visiting sites related to all the things I'm interested in.
*Music - I love anything that rocks from classic rock to alternative to hair bands to heavy metal. I also like some pop and dance music as well as jazz. I have way too many favorite bands and musicians to list them all but a few are Simon & Garfunkel, old Metallica, Poison, Bon Jovi, old Skid Row, old Motley Crue, Scorpions, John Mellencamp, James Blunt, Three Doors Down, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Satriani, Pink Floyd, Scorpions, The Police, U2, Tom Petty and Santana. Also way too many favorite songs but a few are Ozzy's "Crazy Train," "Fly Me Courageous" by Drivin 'n Cryin', "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab for Cutie, "Patterns" and "The Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel, "Tusk" and "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac, "Here Comes the Rain Again" by the Eurthymics, "Rain on the Scarecrow" by John Mellencamp and "No One Like You" and "The Zoo" by the Scorpions. I love listening to everything via Rhapsody on my computer or by using my IPod.
*Satellite Radio - "Michael Waltrip Out Loud" and Claire B. Lang. Plus having a channel for every kind of music imaginable is awesome!
*TV - favorite shows include This Week in Nascar, Top Chef, Project Runway, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Rock of Love. Favorite shows of the past that I miss dearly are Arrested Development and Homicide: Life on the Street.
*Places - anywhere on the ocean or near a beautiful landscape. Cape May, NJ. Ogunguit, Maine. Jekyll Island, GA, particularly Driftwood Beach. Cannon Beach, Oregon. I also love Las Vegas. Cape Porpoise, Maine. Island Beach State Park in NJ. The wild side of Aruba.
*Rivers, waterfalls, lakes, streams - anywhere that there's running/moving water.
*The Paulinskill Viaduct. A huge abandoned (for now) railroad viaduct, beautiful and in the middle of the woods of New Jersey.
*Longwood Gardens - beautiful gardens and fountains on the old Dupont estate in Pennsylvania.
*Grounds for Sculpture.
*Walt Disney World, especially Epcot. Not just for the rides but for the photography.
*Going out to eat at great restaurants. Been to way too many to pick a favorite or mention them all. Expensive or a cheap hole-in-the-wall, as long as the food is good I'm happy.
*I love food. It's a good thing I have a fast metabolism and I've always been thin because I love to eat! Some of my favorite foods include cheese, pizza, french fries, bread, sushi, smoked fish, seafood, anything Asian, dumplings, Spaetzle, matzo ball soup, potato pancakes, perogies, and pasta.
*Porches. Especially rocking chairs on porches on Victorian houses by the sea.
*Hammocks.
*Pugs. Dogs and cats of all kinds but especially when they have smooshy faces.
*Patterns. In nature or otherwise. Love to draw my own. I've got a design I've been working on variations of for probably 15 years now. Every one is similar yet different in the way it's drawn and the colors I use.
*Spirals.
*Lighthouses
*Climbing. I've never climbed anything in my life and likely won't but I like reading about mountain climbing (Everest and some of the mountains in the Northwest especially) and big wall climbing (particularly in Yosemite).
*Anything purple. Colors and things that are colorful.
*Sparkles.
*Silver
*Getting bargains when I'm clothes shopping (not that I go shopping often anymore). Century 21. TJ Maxx. Marshall's. Betsey Johnson. Boots.
*Symbols and symbolism. The meanings to things.
*Learning. Thinking about things. Ideas. Being creative.
*Writing in this blog... obviously.
Posted by silverdsl at June 27, 2008 02:10 PM